Chapter 12 Cheating

According to many studies, cheating by undergraduates has reached epidemic levels, but many faculty members at research universities don’t do anything about it.

Cheating has been a tradition at many universities and little discouragement is being done to short circuit cheating. In 1999, an authoritative poll stated that “three quarters of college students confess to cheating at least once.” It comes down to the question of why is cheating so widespread?

Before reading the chapter I thought about why students would cheat. I believe students cheat because they don’t care to learn the material presented to them in a boring lecture. Any many universities I feel teachers give work out or give exams that can be easily be obtained by outside sources such as cliff notes, or other students who have passed along the tests year after year. These are my thoughts on why. After reading the chapter I was a little close, but there was more detail.

In the 1990’s studies on the issue of cheating was concluded from a survey of thirteen thousand undergraduate students. “A major factor determining whether a student will cheat or not is the academic culture of the specific institution that he or she attends.” Students who attend large universities who are in large lecture courses with distant, frigid, or inexperienced professors, or a TA, tend to cheat. One of the reasons is contempt for a contemptible system. A Michigan State sophomore described how he studied. “Rarely attended, bought lecture notes from an off campus service, and cheated on papers and exams. It’s an eye for an eye, it’s my insults for the school’s insults.” The student cheats because he feels his professors and the school is cheating him out of an education due to the professors and other faculty being inattentive and inaccessible.

I agree with the student’s complaint of a professor who is unreachable and is lazy. Why would a student want to listen to a professor talk about the interesting material in the most boring way class after class and not learning anything? As I said in the last blog, the teaching methods are mind-numbing and need to be changed.

The students who cheat are in classes with hundreds of students. It is easy to cheat. When a student respects and knows his professor personally the student is less likely to cheat. Every student can and should act as a responsible and ethical individual. However, the neglect of undergraduate programs by research universities can explain the large amount of students cheating. Basically, professors and many other people don’t want to deal with students who cheat. Said by professors, “it is too much effort.”

A professor is quoted at the University of Texas saying, “We [professors] are smart, you [undergraduates] are stupid. We lecture, you take notes.” This is an example of how professors at Big-time universities feel about undergraduates. A negative and condescending remark made by a person who “teaches.” It is crazy to want to learn after a comment like that. It still boggles my mind to why professors don’t care about undergraduates. There are many young students who are talented and have lots of potential but is wasted because a professor feels he is wasting his time. I’m disgusted, appalled to read how professors feel and treat other students.

The author then brings the cheating back to sports and athletes for a little bit. The thought of a student or a tutor would help an athlete cheat. Many of the interviews and quotes from students would help a star athlete get a good grade in class. There was a mixture of responses. Some said they would help the athlete study but not cheat. Others said they could care less and let them fail. I feel either way the student athlete would get eligibility just because they are an athlete and how the system works. In many cases there is proof of tutors or TAs writing papers for athletes and the school is directly responsible for cheating. “A tutor for the University of Minnesota revealed that she had written over 400 papers for 20 varsity men’s basketball players between 1993 and 1998.” Another incident at Minnesota happened when a tutor composed papers, take home exams, and was encouraged and rewarded by the athletic department. It is suspicious and many professors realize it but brush it off because nothing can really be done.

Some athletes say they have an excuse for cheating. Many of the young athletes spend 40 to 50 hours a week with their sport and have no time or energy to study. But do they have a right to cheat? Does anyone feel guilty? The athletic departments order the tutors to keep the jocks eligible any way they can. Other critics say the athletes are victims who are apart of a complex and exploitative system.

The reasons why athletes and other students cheat are very complicated, but there are many student athletes who do not cheat, some honest undergraduates do exist.



Chapter 12 about cheating is very deep and detailed and is my favorite chapter yet. I was very interested about what the author discovered based upon the studies done and what student were saying about the schools and professors. There were many points I agreed with. I felt this chapter opened up a lot of ideas for me and brought me to both sides of the stories for athletes and other students on a college campus. It is an interesting topic and would like to read more about it.